Accepting Algren submissions

Glenn Kaupert

Glenn Kaupert

Elizabeth Taylor

Why would the Chicago Tribune, where well-documented fact is the basic of everything we do, run a nationally recognized contest for original short fiction?

How did the Chicago Tribune come to run a nationally recognized contest for original short fiction? That’s a question we have been asked every year for nearly a quarter century since launching our annual Nelson Algren Short Story contest.

In “Chicago: City on the Make,” Algren’s prose poem to the place he so passionately loved and chronicled, Algren pays homage to the Chicagoans who came “(f)rom the forgotten battlegrounds on the other side of the billboards, on the other side of the TV commercials, the other side of the headlines.”

Fiction helps us make sense of a world in which horrible things happen--children on a school bus are killed, and their parents try to pick up the pieces, or a teen is killed by schoolmates while others watch from a distance. This is a world that all but defies imagination, where lovers and friends, criminals and victims, enemies and allies, traitors and confidantes engage with other on the page, and elevate the everyday of life into art.

In the Nelson Algren contest, we try to create a perfect world, in which all stories are treated equally. Names and addresses are removed and numbers are assigned to each submission, so we do not privilege well-known authors. Stories are subjected to an elaborate judging system with which Algren would have had no patience. We can boast that we’ve published some of the first work of authors like Louise Erdrich or Julia Glass who’ve gone on to the bestseller list, and every year we think of some our judges who’ve since left this world, George Plimpton, Studs Terkel and Eudora Welty.

We’re enormously proud of Printers Row Journal, our 24-page weekly literary supplement, available by subscription, and delighted that it has provided us with an opportunity to expand the Algren contest. While we’ve previously awarded only four prizes in the past, now we will award one winner, three finalists and six runners-up.

Those 10 stories will then be published in our Printers Row Journal Fiction insert, allowing us to share more widely some of the best fiction writing today.

Stories are due by Feb. 1. Details can be found via printersrowjournal.com. And readers should get ready for our Printers Row Lit Fest (June 8-9), when we’ll announce the winners.